The tickets to John Paul White's show this June sold-out in two minutes. And almost broke Tangled String Studios' website.

By bringing in Grammy winners, elite Americana acts and promising regional bands, Tangled String is emerging as Alabama's next great intimate music venue.

Which is funny because Tangled String is a guitar shop.

The venture opened in June 2012 as a place for Huntsville rocket-scientist-turned luthier Danny Davis to build and sell his exquisite acoustic guitars. Black Crowes co-founder Rich Robinson and the SteelDrivers' Gary Nichols are among the artists playing Danny Davis Guitars. When it began, Tangled String also operated as a recording studio, operated by Todd Haller, who'd previously been a sound engineer/roadie with Americana star Jason Isbell.

"It was organic," Danny says of Tangled String evolving into a live music venue. "We didn't say, 'Let's go build a venue' we said, 'Let's go build a great sounding room.' And for me I just needed to build a shop and I had built guitars long enough to know what I needed in a shop and I built the best shop I could."

Tangled String is housed in an airy "railroad room" at Lowe Mill (address 2211 Seminole Drive), a sprawling Huntsville facility home to copious artists and makers. Inside, Tangled String's brick walls are dotted with guitars, old concert posters, visual artwork, family photos and even craft-beer six-pack carriers. Shabby-chic vintage couches and lamps as well as few rows of padded folding chairs are on the venue side, which in on the left. A raised 16-foot-by-13 stage features a striking downlit background of floating wood planks, sourced from a circa-1920s Harvest farm.

Davis' guitar-making shop is in plain view of the venue side. Kind of like those restaurants with open-kitchens where you can watch all the cooks and chefs doing their thing. Except here, instead of ovens and pans, it's band-saws, wood, workbenches and various other equipment Davis uses to build his guitars, which can be seen in various points of completion.

"It's not a logical connection," Davis says of the luthier/music venue hybrid. "It's like you walk into the gas station and find this amazing sushi. [Laughs] To me it's just another dimension to the room when you walk in it. And both the artist and the patrons come in this room and immediately feel like they're in kind of a special place." Haller also plays guitar in Huntsville jam-band Liquid Caravan, whose members also include Ryan Wall and Davis' son Ben Davis, who are also partners in Tangled String, as is Danny's wife, Susan Davis, who's responsible for the venue's decor.

Live music at Tangled String started in 2013. While on tour with Isbell, Haller had met Will Johnson from the Texas rock band Centro-matic and after learning Johnson was playing a "living room" show, Ryan Wall suggested Tangled String book Johnson.

"We realized we had a special thing here," Haller says. "We could host 60 people for an intimate concert, something you don't have in Huntsville. As far as a venue goes, we don't have venues in Huntsville we have bars that showcase some really good music."

Haller pushed to get the seating up from 60 to 100. "If we get to a hundred people will take us seriously," he says. "And people have." Now the venue can host as many as 110 for solo acoustic type performances, like Drive-By Truckers guitarist Mike Cooley's sold-out Dec. 15 show.

Booking Rich Robinson was the tipping point for Tangled String as a live venue.

Haller and Danny first connected with Robinson when the Black Crowes were in Huntsville for a 2013 Von Braun Center concert. Soon, Robinson was playing a Danny Davis-made parlor-style guitar on tour with the blues-rocker, using the instrument onstage for such Crowes classics as "Thorn in My Pride." That connection was a bridge to Robinson performing a sold-out solo concert at Tangled String in 2015, following the Crowes breakup earlier that year.

As a Crowes fan for 25 years, I had seen Robinson perform more than 30 times with his former band at various arenas, amphitheaters and concert halls from Huntsville and Birmingham to New York and Los Angeles. Getting a chance to see Robinson work his guitar magic in Tangled String's hyper-intimate space bordered on surreal. It felt like being at a taping of "MTV Unplugged" or something.

By this January, Tangled String was landing acts like SteelDrivers, who played two sold-out shows before flying out to the Grammys where they'd win Best Bluegrass Album. More luthier-venue symbiosis went down too. SteelDrivers' Gary Nichols checked out Danny Davis Guitars while here and now owns two of the instruments. John Paul White has played Tangled String twice now. Once, supporting Shoals songwriting vet Donnie Fritts in February, then returning for his own show, backed by vocal duo The Secret Sisters, in June.

SteelDrivers perform at Tangled String Studios. (Courtesy photo)

"As soon as we started getting a couple of national artists in," Haller says, "then booking artists start looking at you more seriously. 'OK, Huntsville could be a routing date. Parker Millsap's in Atlanta but we've got to get him back to Nashville so we'll play a Huntsville show.'"

White's second Tangled String show - the one that sold-out in two minutes - was the first concert Beth Griggs had ever attended there. She's been back several times since. To see Amanda Shires in October. Mobile-based Americana band Mulligan Brothers in early November and in August, the percussionist heavy Marcus Pope's Drummers Night Out. A NASA contractor by trade, Griggs enjoys seeing live music at Tangled String because of the intimate setting and rich but merciful sound. "I'm not an arena girl anymore you know?" Griggs says. "They do a great job of mixing the sound - nothing ever sounds to heavy or not heavy enough. You can tell those guys running the board are musicians too."

Griggs was particularly fond of the White/Secret Sisters show. A fan of White's former Grammy-winning country-folk duo The Civil Wars, she relished being able to really experience his song-craft up close. She's attended Tangled String shows with several different sets of friends and says that, "Everybody reacted the way I did the first time I went: 'I want to go to every show I possibly can.' I've been to see so many people I've never heard of, but we're going because of where it is and how good it is."

At Tangled String shows, Haller runs the sound from a console at the back of the room. Thanks to his touring work and Full Sail audio school degree he has the chops. There are other things that contribute to Tangled String being a good-sounding venue, Haller says. "There's not a parallel wall in this room - the ceiling slops from 16 feet to 12 feet, front to back. You have this almost diffuser with the brick, you have the different columns that protrude out. It's not a flat surface like sheetrock where sound reflects easily off of it."

During construction, a sine wave burst was used to help tune the room and determine where the stage should go. There are bass traps and acoustic insulation discreetly positioned intermittently across the ceiling and walls. Tangled String stopped being an active recording studio after their first year, due to time commitments from the studio's operators (Haller, Wall and Ben Davis), who each have full-time missile-defense and NASA-related jobs . But that initial infrastructure allows them to offer artists the option of recording live shows here.

Recently, Tangled String began simultaneously broadcasting their concerts online, reaching 4,000 viewers The Mulligan Brothers show. They look to "Austin City Limits" TV broadcasts for inspiration and hope to continue to grow viewers. Tangled String is not however looking to expand their Lowe Mill space. But it's only nature to wonder, if they can get these kinds of artists with a 100-person capacity, what could they do with 600?

"Honestly, I would never change or abandon exactly what this is," Danny says. "It's boutique and it's got a good feel to it. Now we may do something else, a bigger room or something like that, but making this room bigger is not an option. It's just the right size for what we want to do. It fits."

A band-saw in Tangled String Studios' guitar shop has been decorated with a Jerry Garcia sticker. (Matt Wake/mwake@al.com)

Jeff Irons, who works in aerospace business development and owns Irons Distillery, says at Tangled String shows, "even when you just walk up to the place you get a wonderful vibe." He also likes the crowd is a "mix of eclectic people who all share a love of music. Everybody's very quiet and respectful of the musicians and their art, but then again if the music really gets going people are having a good time. But I've never felt like I needed to lean over to my neighbor and say, 'Shut up, I'm listening here.'"

Folk-pop duo The Sweeplings played an EP release show at Tangled String in 2014. The group returns Nov. 30 for a sold-out performance promoting their new Christmas EP "Winter's Call," which features originals such as "Never Again" and reimagined classics including "I'll Be Home for Christmas." The Sweeplings are comprised of Spokane, Wash. singer/pianist Cami Bradley (of "America's Got Talent" fame) and Huntsville singer/guitarist Whitney Dean (who previously toured nationwide with John Paul White).

For a rising band, performing to an audience there to listen instead of just drink and socialize is "a dream come true," Dean says. "From the artist's perspective that's what you want, that moment to grab people's attention. Here's what I've created, here's my perspective, here's my art, give it a shot. And at Tangled String you have that opportunity. These people want to get to know you as an artist."

At Tangled String, The Sweeplings use the small room their advantage, opting for something like you might see on "VH1 Storytellers."

"We share more about the songs and why we wrote them and why they're special to us and all that type of thing," Dean says. "As opposed to our general approach which is we perform our set and we may say something here and there. At Tangled String, when we play the song everybody can relate deeper to that song."

Dean is another artist who not only performs at Tangled String he plays Danny Davis Guitars as well - custom white and black guitars that match The Sweeplings' color-motif. He got to pick out the wood for his instruments, the fret size, everything. "I've never played another guitar that I've ever felt more comfortable with and passionate about then these two he's built for me," Dean says. Danny Davis Guitars headstocks are adorned with a mother-of-pearl inlay depicting a bonsai tree.

Haller's experience working in venues across the country while touring have proved invaluable to Tangled String. Not only in terms of running sound, but also cultivating an experience super-welcoming to artists. There's a green room in the back so artists can have some privacy before and after shows. And they often meet artist rider requirements with home-cooked meals, with Danny's wife Susan preparing items such as lasagna or Santa Fe soup.

"When an artist is travelling in 15-passenger van for two weeks straight," Haller says, "and you're eating Subway and gas station food and somebody bring in a deli meat tray, it gets old. And so we really to go above and beyond to meet the artists' request because we know it will make their experience better, it will make our experience better and they can pass on (to other artists): 'We just came from a great spot down in Huntsville, you guys should visit there.'"